


A Brighter Darkness

by Eriathalia, VivatRex



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Adventures in History, Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Angst, Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), Good Omens Big Bang, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Idiots in Love, M/M, Reverse Omens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22274620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eriathalia/pseuds/Eriathalia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VivatRex/pseuds/VivatRex
Summary: A celestial clerical error changes everything on the surface, but the ending was always set from the start.[Written for Good Omens Big Bang 2019]
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 190
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	A Brighter Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, I've been so very excited to share this one. I've been wanting to try my hand at Reverse Omens for ages...and swearing off reading any, so whatever I came up with would be wholly my own, but that being said, if I've unintentionally done something that's been done to death, forgive me.
> 
> This is essentially the Hard Times cold open with a few modern day scenes tacked on, but, you know, reversed! And with different moments in history, depending. You can assume however that every scene from the cold open not included/modified in some fashion, did still happen. If I thought nothing would change even with a demonic Aziraphale and angelic Crowley, I didn't include it. (I'll die on the hill that they wouldn't change *that* much if they were swapped, which I do believe is the entire point of the two of them. But, that doesn't mean I don't think Aziraphale wouldn't TOTALLY lean into being a demon.)
> 
> Crowley's angelic identity is one I came up with based on Aziraphale's closest lore equivalent, so for a true swap, I thought Crowley as Gader'el made the most sense. I know the name is often written as Gadreel, but cut me some slack, I beg of you. I write for SPN too and all the double names are starting to wear on my sanity. And yes I'll admit my reasoning for him taking Crowley as his name is a bit thin, but I had to get him there somehow. 
> 
> Also, as always, artistic liberties supercede historical accuracy, though I at least made an effort.
> 
> Most importantly of all, shout-out to my brilliant team-mate Eriathalia for her amazing art, and being so supportive through all of this! Here's the link to her lovely art for the Mainz scene:
> 
> https://eriathalia.tumblr.com/post/190308516853/this-piece-was-done-for-the-good-omens-big-bang

_"I have never loved a darker blue_  
_Than the darkness I have known in you, own from you_  
_You, whose heart would sing of anarchy_  
_You, who'd laugh at meanings, guarantees,_  
_So beautifully_

_When our truth is burned from history_  
_By those who figure justice in fond memory, witness me_  
_Like fire weeping from a cedar tree_  
_Know that my love would burn with me_  
_We'll live eternally."_

—Hozier, "Better Love"

* * *

**HEAVEN** — **4004 BC**

Zakzakiel hated paperwork. Passionately. Which was why he often wondered why that particular duty always seemed delegated to _him_. Sat at a desk in a far away, brightly lit corner somewhere, stacks upon stacks piled up all around him, waiting for a signature, or to be sent (via dove, which—talk about impractical) to wherever its intended destination was.

The desk of another lowly angel who had never been given anything better to do. 

He spent most of his time doodling in the margins of forms, rather than actually keeping up on his work, but he couldn’t help it. He needed any kind of mental break he could get his hands on. Things had been so overwhelming since She had decided to make the Earth. Trying to keep track of the animals alone! And some of them—good Lord. Just, bad to look at. How was he supposed to sign off on a horse? They were objectively horrifying. No one in their right mind would think, yeah, let’s just have something like _that_ prancing around down there, everybody’ll love it.

But he signed it all the same, and sent it up the ladder.

“Zakzakiel."

He jumped, stirred out of his thoughts by none other than the Archangel Gabriel. 

Swearing had not been invented yet, but if it had, Zakzakiel would’ve had a few choice words—to be uttered only in the sanctity of his own mind, of course.

“Kind of spacing out there, weren’t you?” asked Gabriel patronizingly. “Just a friendly reminder, pal, this is important stuff. We can’t have you nodding off on the job. You wouldn’t want to let…” he bounced his eyebrows and pointed upwards ominously, “HER down, would you?” 

“N-No, no sir. Of course not. What can I help you with?” Zakzakiel asked, trying and failing to conceal his panic. God, could they demote him further than this? He shuddered to think of it. 

“Some orders have stalled out on your desk—pretty important ones, too. Guardian assignments for Eden.” Gabriel gave him a serious look. “You haven’t lost them, right?” 

“Got them right here,” he said frantically, searching for the orders he knew were somewhere in the chaos of his desk. He did find it, and quickly, only to realize he had scribbled over a large section of the paper. The Guardians of the Western, Southern, and Northern Gates names and ranks were visible, but he’d drawn a large horse over the Eastern Gate Guardian.

(He couldn’t get the damn things out of his head.) 

He quickly miracled it clean and picked a random angel’s name, having not known what was underneath the haphazard horse drawing to begin with. He nervously handed it off to Gabriel, who examined it with narrowed eyes.

“Putting Gader’el on the walls of Eden, huh?” he seemed dubious. “Not sure that’s the best plan, but. Not my department.” He shrugged. “Keep up the…” Zakzakiel could feel the tangible absence of the word _good_ , “...work.” 

Gabriel vanished, leaving Zakzakiel alone. 

The next morning, the Principality Gader’el found himself watching over Eden’s Eastern Gate. 

* * *

**EDEN** — **4004 BC**

Gader’el stood on the walls of Eden and watched with growing concern as Adam and Eve stepped out into the infinite stretch of white sands, their hands clasped together. That was New. The two of them had found all sorts of ways to touch thus far that angels had certainly never considered, but they seemed to enjoy it, so Gader’el never felt the need to discourage them. 

Carefully, they made their way forward—and away. Away from the safety of Eden and its walls, forever banished. 

But, at least they had a sword.

Anxiety gripped Gader’el’s stomach; surely God wouldn’t be _too_ mad at him for this? What was he supposed to do, just let them go out there—lions, tigers, bears, all that—and just let them get eaten alive? Eve was expecting, for Heaven’s sake. It would’ve been downright wrong, fruit ingestion notwithstanding. So they wanted to know what was out there. So they wanted to know the difference between Good and Evil. Had the Almighty really expected them not to be curious creatures? She had _made_ them. She should’ve known.

Well. Maybe that’s why they said it was all ineffable. She knew everything, didn’t She? That was kind of the Point. 

Storm clouds gathered, viciously black overhead. 

Gader’el jumped when he heard a hiss from nearby. He watched with apprehension as an enormous dark blue-and-black snake slid up the wall, coming to rest beside him. It then morphed into a human of middling age and height, with tight, nearly white curls. Well, human except for the eyes; blue, with the slit pupils of a snake. Demons all had animal aspects, though usually they were far more pronounced. Other than his eyes, the winding snake tattoo that began at the nape of his neck and wrapped around to terminate at the top of his sternum was the only clue as to what he truly was.

“To be perfectly honest,” said the demon, black wings stretching out on either side of him, “I didn’t expect Her to just— _send them off_ like that.”

Ah. So this was the Tempter. The one who’d gotten them to eat from the Tree. Gader’el supposed he should’ve threatened him or something, but without a sword, why bother with it? He’d never been much good in a fight anyway, as Gabriel had made sure to frequently remind him. 

“A bit of an overreaction, in my opinion,” the demon continued. “Why wouldn’t She want them to know the difference between Good and Bad? What could possibly be so wrong about that?”

“Well, you’re a demon,” Gader’el pointed out pleasantly. “Aren’t you supposed to get humans to do the wrong thing? Why get them to eat the fruit if you thought it was the right thing?”

The demon blanched at the implication. “Just because it wasn’t WRONG doesn’t mean it was RIGHT,” he said, a bit of panic in his voice. “Dear L—Satan, if they thought I’d done something right _down there_ ,” the demon gestured downwards nervously, “well, there’d be consequences.” 

“Yeah, I imagine there would be,” Gader’el responded, not sure what to make of the demon. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Me?” the demon blinked, seeming surprised by the question. Or more like, just surprised Gader’el wasn’t trying to smite him. “Ah, it’s Zira. And I know you, of course. The Guardian of the Eastern Gate himself. The Principality Gader’el.”

Something tickled in the back of Gader’el’s memory, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Well, Zira, if it makes you feel any better, Upstairs is having fits over this, so—you must’ve done the right thing. Or, I mean, the wrong thing—which is the right thing for a demon.” Gader’el’s brow furrowed. “This is confusing.” 

Zira nodded in emphatic agreement. “Yes, yes it is.” Zira’s serpentine eyes traced over him quizzically. “Excuse me, but I _must_ ask...didn't you have a sword?"

Gadere’el swallowed with great difficulty. “Uh, sword? Never had a sword. No idea what you’re talking about.”

“No, I do believe you did...hard to miss, flaming and such…”

Gader’el pinched his eyes shut. Dare he tell the demon? Oh, but it would feel so good to get it off his chest. “Gave it away,” he muttered under his breath.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I gave it away,” he burst out. “The sword. To them.” He pointed at Adam and Eve’s retreating backs. 

“ _Did you_ ,” the demon breathed, seeming incredibly pleased. 

Gader’el spluttered, desperate to explain himself in a way that wouldn’t end up with him bloody Falling. “Look, err—I mean, what else was I supposed to do, just, just let them get eaten by whatever’s out there? And then what? Then She has to start the whole birth of humanity thing over again, what’s the point? What’s the point when I could, you know. Help.” 

The demon beamed at him. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he did feel a blush creeping up his neck. 

“Just hope I didn’t muck it all up,” Gader’el said, deflating somewhat.

“Well, She must have seen this coming, yes? Omniscience and all that?” Zira offered. 

“Who’s to say what She’s thinking,” Gader’el replied, dejected.

“That’s the entire bitch of the thing, dear boy,” said Zira, fond expression slipping into something bitter. “It’s _ineffable_.”

In the distance, he watched Adam slay a lion with his flaming sword.

“So this was supposed to happen all along?”

“In one way or another," Zira confirmed. 

Gader’el did feel a rush of relief at that. “I hope you’re right.”

“I usually am.” 

They both stirred and lifted their heads when water, for some reason, began to fall from the sky.

“New invention of Hers?” wondered the demon, almost bored.

Gader'el flinched when the first few droplets hit his skin. "Guess so," he said with a grimace. 

Without seeming to think about it much, Zira shielded the angel from the rain with one of his massive raven wings.

Together, they stood on Eden’s easternmost wall, and watched the first storm. 

* * *

**MESOPOTAMIA — 3004 BC**

“Hello, Gader’el. Fancy meeting you here.”

Gader’el nearly jumped out of his skin at the distantly familiar voice. He turned to see the demon Zira at his side, clad in a dark blue robe, a sharp contrast to the white one he wore himself.

“Hey Zira,” he greeted. “Long time.”

“Indeed it has been. How did that flaming sword business turn out for you?” he asked, ice blue snake eyes focused entirely on him. 

“Well, uh, the Almighty did ask about it.”

“And?”

Gader’el fidgeted nervously. “Didn’t really say anything,” he said, entirely unwilling to admit that he’d lied to a being that was intrinsically all-knowing.

Zira bounced his eyebrows in dim surprise, before turning his attention to the enormous boat being constructed on the banks of the Euphrates. The humans had been working on it for ages, and it was near completion. 

“What is all this about, then? I hear God is less than satisfied with humanity. Thinking of going back to the drawing board, so to speak.”

“Well, She’s uh, She’s not gonna kill all of them,” Gader’el said, trying to stifle the ever-growing pit of dread in his stomach. “Just the locals. Think She’s still cool with the Native Americans. And the Australians. And the Chinese. Pretty, uh, pretty much everyone but these poor sods, it seems.”

Zira’s eyes wandered to the children laughing and playing nearby, chasing each other with brittle sticks and making at a fake battle. “Not all of them, I hope?”

Gader’el felt sick. “All of them but Noah and his family.”

“Surely not—”

“Yes, the children too.”

“To what end?” the demon demanded, horrified. “What could that possibly accomplish?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what She’s thinking. I don’t know why She’s doing this,” Gader’el rambled, more distressed by the second. 

“It’s _ineffable_ ,” the demon hissed, a quiet rage dancing in his eyes. “We’ll never know. No use speculating.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a unicorn breaking loose from its paddock. Gader’el excused himself for a moment to help catch it, but when he returned, the demon Zira was already gone.

* * *

Two days later, Gader’el stood on the bow of the Ark, watching the waves that used to be the world roll by. It was raining, quite hard, but he found he didn’t so much mind the rain, now that he’d had a few millennia or so to get used to it. 

He was surprised when he felt a tugging on the edge of his robe. Young Tiras, one of Noah’s grandsons, was trying to get his attention. 

“What’s up?” Gader’el asked.

“There’s a door on the boat that wasn't there before, and none of us can get it open,” said the boy, and Gader’el let himself be led to the mysterious door that stood side-by-side with the door that led to the orlop deck. 

He agreed with Tiras. It definitely hadn’t been there before, and upon touching it, he realized it was warded—though only insomuch that it kept humans away. Not angels.

“Stay here. I’ll go have a look,” he told the young boy, then slipped through the door and shut it behind him, ignoring Tiras’s protests. He was immediately hit by the sound of overwhelmingly loud chatter, which he had certainly NOT heard when he’d been in the hall. Baffled, he tramped down the stairs, and found himself—

Found himself in a room full of thousands of people. A room that was clearly miracled to hold much more than it had any business holding. Food was passed around, small fires burned here and there amidst hundreds upon hundreds of cots and tents. 

“What the hell…?”

“I gathered as many as I could.”

Gader’el’s head snapped to his side. The demon Zira stood there, looking serene. “You…?”

“Mmm. My biggest Wile yet. Since the Almighty wanted all these people to die, they all must have been terrible, _horrible_ sinners. I’ve totally ruined God’s plans to repopulate the earth with the purehearted.” 

Gader’el had never smiled so broadly, not once in the past thousand years. He was speechless; how often had he heard tirades from Home Office about demons, utter beasts that seek only to corrupt and destroy. But that had never sat quite right with him. They’d all been angels once, hadn’t they? And Zira had always been in the back of his mind, since the day they had met. He hadn’t seemed very demonic to him. Hadn’t seemed like he wanted to destroy anything, really. 

“You won’t tell your superiors, I hope?” Zira tried and failed to conceal his nervousness.

Gader’el made a show of looking around the room. “Me? I don’t see anything. Nothing going on here at all. Just some ropes, bags of grain. Exactly what you’d expect. Can’t let anyone down here, though. The rats look pretty mean.”

It was Zira’s turn to smile. 

Gader’el miracled a breadbasket into his arms. “S’pose I’ll just...feed the rats, then.”

Zira laughed. “They’re a hungry lot, I should say.” After a moment’s thought, he summoned up several wineskins. “Thirsty, too.”

Together, they moved through the crowd.

* * *

“Come on then, just give it a try. It’s amazing what these humans can do.”

“I’m really not—”

“You’ve done things you weren’t supposed to before, what’s one more time? If you’re going to be among humans, you have to understand them, yes?”

Finally, reluctantly, Gader’el accepted the wineskin from Zira. He’d never tried it before, but he knew humans truly enjoyed it. 

They were leaning on the ship’s bow, making sure to stay out of sight of any of Noah’s sons or grandsons. While they recognized and readily welcomed Gader’el’s presence, the sight of Zira would frighten them. It was the eyes. The fact that they glowed in the dark didn’t help much. 

Carefully, Gader’el took a sip. Zira had already half finished the wineskin himself while he’d been trying and failing to get Gader’el to partake. 

He swallowed it, but he made a face. “It’s...I mean, it’s _okay_ , but it’s a bit sour. What do they make it out of again? Grapes?”

“Spoiled grapes,” Zira confirmed, waving him off when he tried to return the wineskin. “You’ll understand why they love it so much if you keep at it, trust me.”

Gader'el snorted. “You’re trouble.”

“That’s what I aim to be, dear boy.”

“Just...drinking rotten fruit juice. Bizarre.” He took another sip. Still not impressed. “And what do you mean, trust you? You’re a demon, I’m an angel. Trusting you would be pretty stupid, wouldn't it?”

“You do trust me, though. Which is absolutely endearing,” teased the demon.

“Shouldn’t you be nervous?” said Gader’el between a few more sips, which were quickly becoming draughts, which were a lot like sips except you didn’t act like it was the worst thing you’d ever put in your mouth. “Faffing about with an angel. Hell would clip your wings if they knew.”

Zira yawned. “I’d be more worried about yourself, Gader’el. I can always claim that I’m trying to corrupt you.”

That thought hadn’t occurred to him before. And he would never be able to use such an excuse in regards to Zira—demons, by definition, could not be saved. “Clever.”

“I thought so.”

“So, are you?” He noticed a faint buzzing between his ears, and the world seemed...more fluid. Was it the wine? Was this the point of it? Oh, and warm. He felt terribly warm. 

“Am I what?” 

“Trying to corrupt me?” he clarified, looking beseechingly at Zira. He hoped the answer was no. He’d like to have a friend, he decided, and the other angels weren’t very interested in that. Ever since the Fall, closeness between them had been increasingly discouraged. That had been one of the big problems, hadn’t it? That some had gotten so close to Lucifer and loved him so deeply that they were willing to turn from God?

Zira seemed to mull on it. “It would be a definite bonus,” he decided, “but not why I’m here.”

“Oh?” The wineskin was almost empty now, and with a half-shrug, he drained the rest.

“You’re interesting,” Zira elaborated, hands clasped over his stomach, appearing absolutely content. He leaned back to look up at the stars, crystal clear and cold in the night. They were in the eye of the storm now, safe from rain until they reached the other side.

Gader’el looked up, too. He missed being among the stars. He’d helped make a few, in the Very Very Beginning. 

“Am I?”

“More than any other angel or demon I know.”

Gader’el smiled in spite of himself. “You’re not so bad, either,” he said. “For a demon.”

Zira just scoffed. 

Together, they watched the stars in companionable silence, and Gader’el felt less alone than he had since the day God first put him on the walls of Eden. 

* * *

**GOLGOTHA** — **32 AD**

“Father, please. You have to forgive them— _ah!_ —they don’t know what they are doing.”

He’d seen a lot of horrible things in his time, but this one...this one might take the cake. Maybe because he’d known the man, and knew that of all the people in this sodden, unforgivable world, he deserved this pain the least. 

He heard footsteps beside him, and detected a familiar, demonic presence. 

“Hello, Gader’el,” said Zira solemnly.

“I’ve changed it,” he said distractedly, still unable to take his eyes off the three crosses atop Calvary. 

“Changed what?”

“My name. I thought, you know, supposed to be among humans, and—well, it’s a whole new world, after this. Word from on high says we’re not supposed to be too hands on, now that Grace is a thing. Try to guide, but uh...subtly. And _Gader’el_ isn’t exactly subtle. Basically holding up a big flashy sign that says ANGEL.” 

“Then pray tell, my dear, what should I call you?”

“Crowley. I like Crowley.”

“I didn't realize you were a bird enthusiast."

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that yes, that was the biggest contributing factor to his new choice in name. “Just seemed to fit.”

Zira nodded his approval. “I don’t disagree.” He redirected his attention to the cross. “Did you know him?”

A deep frown from Crowley. “Yeah. Spent some time together.” A lot of time.

Zira’s expression was inscrutable. “What exactly did he say, to get them all so worked up?”

Crowley closed his eyes, a wave of anger rolling over him that he tried to control. “Be kind,” he said lowly. 

Zira grimaced. “Yes, that’s sometimes all it takes.”

“Did you know him?”

“Of course. I showed him the world. I showed him _everything_. Forty days and forty nights, I tempted him. And for forty days and forty nights I failed.”

Crowley blinked, surprised. “Why? All the tempting, I mean."

“Because,” Zira said, clearly bitter, “well, aside from the fact that I was acting on orders—I know a martyr when I see one. This was always where he was going to end up, it was just a matter of when. I’d hoped I could steer him off this path, because it would only end one way—”

“With him dead,” Crowley finished miserably. “This is wrong. It’s all wrong.”

Zira’s eyes turned urgent. “Not here,” he hissed, “there’s too many of _your_ side floating around...and _She’s_ watching.” He looked pointedly upward. 

“I don’t care, She can go—”

Zira clapped a hand around Crowley’s mouth and repeated, far more animalistic, “Not _here._ ”

When Zira seemed sure he wouldn’t say anything further to damn himself, he released him. Crowley clenched his jaw and finally brought himself to look away from the cross.

“I need a drink,” he told the demon.

Zira nodded. “Yes. Me too.”

Together, they departed, but the screams followed them all the way back to the city. 

* * *

**DELPHI** — **67 AD**

Crowley had never felt so out of place in his life. 

Writhing, oiled bodies—the smell of opium and blue lotus in the air, complemented by sweat, sex, and wine. Noise, everywhere. The beating of a drum from some location he couldn’t determine. The entire hollow within Mt. Parnassus was an utter testament to human debauchery. 

He facepalmed. None of this was going to be fun. And he already stood out like a sore thumb, with his warm amber eyes and red hair. Everything about him screamed _foreigner_. Was he going to start off this assignment getting kicked out of an orgy? More than likely. Honestly, Gabriel could’ve sent _anyone_ else…

Sandals slapping against stone, he reluctantly descended the carved rock stairs into the fray, already gathering stares from the party-goers. Mostly athletes here for the panhellenic games, their bodies speaking to their profession. His goal was the young, boisterous man behind the Praetorian guard. Through broad shoulders, he made out a cherubic looking twenty-something with a lyre, surrounded by cooing onlookers.

Nero. 

However, Crowley sensed something within the crowd that distracted him, a presence he knew all too well. Forgoing his target, he pushed further into the throng, seeking out the familiar demonic flare.

“Zira?”

Zira lounged utterly naked against a pile of velvet pillows, a young man’s face pressed between his thighs, the sounds of sucking impossible to miss. Zira occasionally reached for a bowl of grapes, popping one into his mouth while he carded fingers through the young blond’s hair. 

“Crowley!” he greeted him happily, his snake eyes heavy-lidded with lust (and possibly opium.) “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

He was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about approaching Zira now. “Uh, we can talk later.”

“Why not talk now? I’m not busy.”

“I—but—can’t you send him away, or something?” Crowley spluttered.

Zira laughed. “Why? Does it make you uncomfortable? I’m surprised at you, Crowley. You’re usually very happy to try new things. You’ve never tried a human?”

He blushed furiously. “I’m supposed to shepherd them, not fuck them,” he insisted. 

“Why not both?” Another grape, and Zira made a show of licking his lips before grasping both hands around the young man’s head and thrusting into his mouth in slow, sinuous strokes, keeping eye contact with Crowley all the while. The blond made obscene noises, almost as if he was choking.

“Are you hurting him?” Crowley asked, concerned.

Zira laughed, throwing his head back. “Quite the opposite, actually.” His movements increased in their speed, but he seemed insistent on maintaining his conversation with Crowley. “If you’re not here to join me—which would be a delight, by the by—then what brings you to Greece?”

“I can come back later,” Crowley said, turning to go.

“Nonsense, dear boy. I’m almost—” A few more unpolished thrusts of the demon’s hips, and he sagged, “Aahhhhhh. Finished.” He patted the boy’s head, and he pulled away gasping, mouth dripping with— _oh good Lord_ , this was all so disgusting. 

The young man fumbled for a towel and cleaned off his mouth. When he was done, Zira seized the blond by his hair and kissed him languidly. He pulled back after a few moments and patted his cheek affectionately. “Lovely as always, Ariphron. I’ll see you later.” 

The young man skittered away, leaving the two as alone as they could be in the throng of writhing humans. 

Zira patted the ground next to him. “Sit.” He offered up a wineskin. “Drink. Enjoy. It’s a time for celebration. Cooperation and sportsmanship and all that.”

“Looks like sex and drugs to me,” Crowley said, though he did take a seat at Zira’s side. “Can you, ah, could you maybe—”

With a roll of his eyes, Zira snapped his fingers from down to up, and then he was clad in a velvet royal blue chiton, clasped with a silver snake brooch. “There. Enough for your delicate sensibilities?” 

“Well excuse me for not wanting a full frontal view,” Crowley bristled, blushing. “When did you become such an exhibitionist?”

Zira spread out his arms. “The Greeks and Romans have mastered the art of sin. I’m merely encouraging them along. It’s quite clear cut in the job description.”

Crowley made a sound of disapproval, but didn’t pursue the subject. “Well. I’m here to try to guide Nero back onto the path of righteousness. Try to do his soul some good before he returns to Rome.”

Zira’s lazy, carefree demeanor vanished in an instant. “What?” he snapped. “No. You’ll stay away from him.”

Crowley blinked, confused. “Uh...why?”

“Let me put it this way: I was sent to corrupt Nero and make sure he kept being, well, terrible. And Crowley? I haven’t had to do a damned _thing._ He’s mad. Vindictive. Cruel. He has his moments of sanity, of humanity, but they grow fewer and farther between as time goes on. He’s dangerous, and I don’t wish to see you discorporated. I do know how your side can be about having to make new bodies.”

“I have to at least make an effort,” Crowley argued. “Don’t want to sit through another lecture from Gabriel.”

“It’s worth it to stay out of Nero’s way. Never mind that…” He glanced around to make sure no one was listening in on them, then leaned closer to Crowley. In a hushed voice, he continued, “Plans are in place...for Nero’s downfall. After he started ordering the rich to kill themselves and bequeath their estates to the Emperor upon their deaths, he’s fallen out of favor with the entire Senate. The plebeians used to love him, he had the common touch, to be sure, preferred the company of actors and poets to politicians. But even they’ve seen him for what he truly is, now. He’s been his own undoing. Tell Gabriel or whoever it is you report to that it’s already too late—Nero’s sealed his fate.”

“But…”

“I’ve seen what he’s capable of,” Zira pressed, eyes intently focused on Crowley’s. Crowley jumped when he felt the coolness of the demon’s palm on his thigh, through the relatively sheer fabric of his peplos. “Please, Crowley. Just listen to me in this.”

It came back to that conversation they’d had on the Ark thousands of years ago. Crowley did, in spite of everything that told him he shouldn’t—he did trust Zira. Then, and now. 

“Well, I need to at least do _something_ good while I’m here,” Crowley insisted. “Anywhere you know that might need a miracle?” 

“Not offhand, but I’m sure we can find something.” He removed his hand from Crowley’s leg, and Crowley felt a faint loss. 

Zira rose to his feet, slipping his sandals back on. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

“Alright.”

* * *

The sun began to set on them when their feet touched the cool grass of the Gardens of Delphi, extravagant with every flower imaginable. Butterflies flitted around them, bees buzzed, birds chittered in the trees. The air was ripe with life and growth. Crowley adored it.

He and Zira had walked the streets for hours. Zira had led him to a few hotspots for Delphi’s homeless, and Crowley had miracled sight back into a few eyes, healed sick children, made food appear in their empty bowls. They were calling him Apollo, and though Upstairs would be furious if they knew, he didn’t tell them they were wrong. No point in evangelizing anymore, really, since everyone was supposed to have blind faith.

When Crowley felt satisfied that he’d had some net positive effect in Delphi, Zira had in short order taken him to a small restaurant with excellent wine and even more excellent lamb, and then suggested they go here to cap off the day.

Crowley was glad. With a faint smile, he sniffed a nearby Bear’s Breech. “I like this better than the weird orgy cave,” he told Zira.

Zira merely laughed. “To each their own.”

“Do you really like it?” Crowley asked, suddenly curious. Zira was already ahead of him, moving towards a marble fountain. A heron stood in the crystal clear water, paying them no mind. “The, uh. The hedonism of it all.”

“God could end all of this anytime She wanted,” Zira reasoned. “Why not bang a few gongs before the light goes out, hmm? Make the most of my time here. And as long as I’m encouraging humans to indulge their vices, Hell is pleased with me. Personally, I’m much happier tempting people into lust and drunkenness than violence, like some of my more inelegant brethren.”

“There’s got to be more to it all than just that, though. You can’t spend all your time drinking and... _trying_ humans,” Crowley reasoned.

Zira softened unexpectedly. “Oh, I do so much more than that—this is my _job_. But, in my free time,” he nearly seemed to burst with excitement, “Crowley, their _stories_ ,” he gushed, “the stories these brilliant creatures have written! Hundreds of thousands already. The art is wonderful as well, but the stories, they’re what really enchants me. They become their own little gods, with their own little worlds.” 

Crowley delighted at Zira’s enthusiasm. “I’ve read a few. _Lament for Ur_ was nice.”

“I’ve been absolutely spoiling myself. It’s why I can’t resist Greece. Absolutely up to my gills in tales, philosophy, science...they’re figuring things out so quickly, how She does things. It’s miraculous.” 

Crowley couldn’t miss the fondness in his voice. “You like them a lot, don’t you?”

“Much better company than other demons, I assure you,” Zira said with a smirk. “That goes for you as well.”

“Always the flatterer.”

“Mmm. Just trying to seduce you, clearly.” Crowley’s eyes widened when the demon cornered him against one of the fountain’s white marble columns, bodies pressing together. “Or at least, if they ask, that’s the official story...luring an angel to indulge in the earthly pleasures of the flesh.”

Crowley tried and failed to swallow past the lump in his throat. “Err. Right.”

After a moment, Zira swiftly kissed his cheek and pulled back, chuckling to himself. “So sorry, my dear, I just can’t resist watching you squirm.”

Crowley breathed a sigh of relief and seated himself on the fountain. Zira sat next to him, but allowed a bit of distance. “So,” the demon said, growing serious, “what do you plan to tell The Powers That Be, about all this?"

“Some people are beyond saving,” Crowley replied soberly. “Hopefully I don’t get demoted. Or worse, recalled.”

Zira didn’t seem to like that. “Unacceptable. Whoever they replace you with is bound to be an absolute bore.”

“I hear Michael’s angling for the job.”

The demon hissed. “I don’t remember much about before the Fall, but I remember Michael being a—”

“Wanker? Yeah. No kidding.”

They slipped into silence for a bit.

“What _do_ you remember?” Crowley broached tentatively. He’d wondered for over four thousand years, but the right time to ask had never really come up.

“About Heaven?” the demon’s eyes grew distant. “Not a great deal. I remember...flying. When my wings were white. I remember I loved some of my brothers. And I remember that they turned on me when everything fell apart.”

“Do you remember your name?”

Zira looked almost as if Crowley had struck him. “My—? No. No, none of us remember our names. Wiped from the record.”

Crowley went quiet.

“You....do _you_ remember me?” Zira asked, voice softer than he’d ever heard it. 

Crowley remembered another Principality with white-blond hair and blue eyes and an infectious smile who had been thrilled when God had made the humans. One who had a suspiciously similar name to his demonic friend.

“Crowley,” Zira said, very seriously. Crowley wouldn’t look at him, so Zira turned his head with a light touch. Crowley suppressed a shiver. “Crowley, please.”

He saw it now, the pleading in those serpentine eyes. _Tell me. Tell me, I need to know._

“I shouldn’t—”

“ _Please_.”

He couldn’t ignore Zira’s pleas, not when they were so desperate, so genuine. 

In hoarse words barely tracing above a whisper, Crowley spoke: “Aziraphale. Your name was Aziraphale.” 

* * *

**LIN’AN** — **826 AD**

Miracling rain was rather simple work. It involved making it rain, and then waiting, because crops took a long time to grow and lakes took a long time to refill. The West Lake had almost been dry when Crowley had first arrived in Lin’an, but now it was looking a little more lively, and the locals were celebrating and thanking their benevolent ancestors for their good fortune. 

Crowley didn’t mind it here—Southern China was beautiful, without a doubt—but he was bored, he could admit that. Still, a kind of cultural renaissance was beginning, under the guidance of the Song dynasty, and he was excited to see what might come next in the East. 

What came next for him, however, was his favorite demon.

He shouldn’t have been surprised to find Zira lazily backstroking in the lake. Crowley, clad in a red knee-length tunic ornamented with a gold sash, watched him from the shore.

“Having fun?” Crowley called, trying not to smile.

Zira opened one eye, his hands behind his head. “Aren’t I always?”

Crowley gave in and smiled. “What are you doing here, Trouble?”

The nickname had caught on without Crowley really intending it to. He’d been seeing the demon more and more frequently as the years went on and more of their assignments overlapped. Technically, they were supposed to be killing each other, but they both agreed that seemed like a lot of work. 

“I’m supposed to be inciting a revolution, I think, against this fresh new dynasty,” he admitted. “Hell seems to think the Song will be too good for China. I’ve been ordered to stir up a spot of trouble.”

Crowley frowned. That was inconveniently in direct opposition to what he was doing. “I can’t let you do that.”

“I know. Which is why we should talk.”

The next second, Zira appeared next to him, clothed in a similar outfit, though his tunic was far shorter, and his was a rich dark blue, his usual color, with accents of silver thrown in. 

“There’s really nothing to talk about. I’m going to have to stop you if you try something. I don’t really know a way to bullshit us out of this one,” Crowley told him simply. “Unless...well. I DID have sort of an idea, if you want to hear me out.”

“Of course.”

Crowley shifted his feet in the sand, trying to construct the proper wording...he’d been wanting to sell the demon on this for awhile, but Zira _was_ loyal to Hell. He was willing to wiggle around the regulations set before him, but he knew his side, and didn’t have too many complaints about it. Not like Crowley, who had many complaints, not that he would dare voice them aloud to anyone but Zira. 

“We’ve been getting sent to a lot of the same places recently...seems kind of a waste for both of us to go, work our arses off, for what? Why not just...one of us cover, you know, both. And we just let things cancel out. They always do anyway.”

Zira looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Surely you’re not serious. One of us do both the wiling, _and_ the thwarting?”

“Switch off,” Crowley said amicably. “Flip a coin, or something. Make a lot less work for the both of us.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Zira dismissed him out of hand. “I’m a DEMON, you’re an ANGEL. We can’t work _together_.”

“What have we been doing all this time, then?”

The demon huffed. “Purely social!”

“Oh, if that’s what you want to call it.”

"That's what it is and that's what it'll _sss_ stay," hissed Zira, bristling. "I'm afraid we'll be at odds on this one, dear boy. I wish you the best of luck, but, let the games begin, as they say…"

* * *

One week later, Crowley found himself scrambling up the staircase of a burning watchtower, frantically threatening the steadily disintegrating wooden foundation underneath him with every terrifying thing he could think of, to better encourage it to continue holding his weight.

This had all turned out very not well.

He could comfort himself with the knowledge that at least Zira was having a similarly terrible time of it, as the demon was swearing up a storm, just behind Crowley's heels.

"You're the one who gave them torches!" Crowley loudly reminded the demon. "We could have avoided all of this, but _noooo_ , you had to be a traditionalist."

“What are you playing at?” the demon hissed when they both reached the top of the stairs, grabbing Crowley by the front of his tunic. “Are you trying to get us both killed? Burned, is that it? Or do you just _really_ want to know what it is to Fall? Because that is where a bargain like this will lead, I can assure you of that.”

“Aren’t you sick of doing their bidding? Letting them decide what’s right and what’s wrong?”

“That’s _sss_ the entire point of the bloody thing!” Zira hissed in his face, dangerously close, whites of his eyes nowhere to be seen. Just cold, reptilian blue. “Hell says do it, it’s Evil. Heaven says do it, it’s Good! That’s how it’s always been, and one demon and one angel aren’t going to change that!” 

Even under Crowley’s strict orders to not shatter, the tower buckled more prominently under their feet, sending them both spilling backwards in a heap of limbs. Crowley had blocked the door, but they had the whole damn town against them at this point, and it would only hold for so long. 

“Why not!?” Crowley demanded over the roar of the flames, latching onto Zira’s shoulders. “Why NOT us? We’ve been here longer than anyone—any _thing_ , Zira. If we do this, we phone it in, we can spend our time doing what we _want_ to be doing. And my idea of Good is a lot different than what Heaven has in mind, I figured that out a long time ago. I figured that out on the damned Ark.” He thrust a hand towards the window, indicating the shouts of the enraged peasantry below. “We’re going to cancel each other out anyway! We always do! It’s either we do this, or we do what they want, and we kill each other, and—and I don’t think you want that. I know I don’t. I don’t want to kill you, _you’re my friend!_ ”

The demon’s eyes widened. 

The next second, they were in a mountain pass, somewhere, at the base of a Budha statue. Crowley blinked in surprise, glancing around at the rocky terrain, rocks dotted half in part with thin layers of snow and lichen. The sky was a fierce blue, and there was no smell or glimpse of smoke anywhere. 

Zira’s hand was still fisted in his tunic, but after a moment, the demon softened and released him, backing away.

“How do we handle this, then?” he asked tightly, turning his back to Crowley. “We get orders, tell each other—then what?”

“One of us does both.”

“And times like this, where our orders are at direct odds with one another’s?”

“Meh, that doesn’t happen too often. We’ll just trade off losses when we have to.”

Zira’s posture was painfully tight. Crowley wished he would turn so he could see his face. 

“This is a massive risk. For both of us.”

“You can still claim seduction, corruption, whatever,” Crowley insisted.

Zira looked at him over his shoulder, eyes still anything but human. “That won’t help you.”

“I’ll be fine, Zira.”

A beat, then: “I don’t want you to Fall.”

Crowley’s breath was taken away by the sheer emotion in the demon’s voice. Like he couldn’t imagine anything worse. “Zira, I...I won’t, okay? We’ll be fine. You’re worrying too much. You always do.”

“One of us has to!” he snapped. “I need time to think.”

“Okay, but—”

Zira was gone before Crowley could say another word.

* * *

**MAINZ — 1440**

“Johannes, my dear fellow, does the first thing you print _really_ have to be the _Bible_ …”

“Of course, _Herr_ Zira! To what else could I possibly bestow the honor upon other than the word of our Lord?” 

Zira was glad he’d started miracling his eyes to appear non-snake-like to humans, because the absurdity of the comment might’ve actually hit Johannes Gutenberg, had he been able to see Zira for what he truly was. 

“I just...can’t seem to get the ink right,” mourned the German inventor, stroking his beard. Zira leaned over his shoulder, watching him mix linseed oil and soot together in a tiny pot. “Not thick enough.”

“Certainly better than the water based ink the Chinese were using,” Zira mused. “Though they were ahead of their time. Never lent much to mass production, though. If you succeed in this, you might make people actually want to learn how to read.”

What a novelty. He was sure humanity would improve exponentially if knowledge could be shared and dispensed easily and readily to the masses—evil, he’d found, was relatively rare. But ignorance? An absolute epidemic. 

“Ha, now the problem, my good friend, is just the succeeding part!” crowed Johannes. He looked exhausted from all the work he’d been putting into his project, but still very optimistic. Human tenacity. He never grew tired of it.

Zira patted the German on his back. “I’ll go put the kettle on, shall I?”

“I’d thank you kindly for it.”

Zira was busying himself at Johannes’s wood stove when a tapping came at the window. He glanced up, and rolled his eyes when he saw who was vying for his attention.

“Oh, very subtle.”

Crowley waved at him happily through the glass. 

Zira went outside.

“As soon as I heard rumors about a bloke mass-printing books, I knew where I’d find you,” said Crowley, clad in a red velvet doublet, complemented by gold and white breeches. “You’re getting predictable.”

“Oh, do shut up. This could change the world.”

“I hope it does. Still not big on the books—the music is what gets me. Have you heard Dunstable yet? Good stuff.”

“The music isn’t bad either. Most of them are ours, anyway,” he winked at the angel. “So, to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure? I haven’t seen you since that incident in Florence with—”

“Leo forgave me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“If you say so…”

Crowley leaned against the wall of Johannes’ house, crossing his arms. “I’ve got a thing in Munich. You?”

Ah. The Arrangement. They’d done this nine or ten times by now. It still made Zira horribly nervous, down to his bones, but he couldn’t argue Crowley’s logic in all of it. Plus, he wouldn’t pretend that he didn’t like that it meant his path crossed with the angel’s all the more frequently. Crowley had insinuated himself into Zira’s life in a way no other living being ever had. 

He couldn’t imagine his absence. Preferred not to, really. And not just because he was sinfully pretty to look at. 

“Munich as well. Encouraging a Thieves Guild.”

“And I’m supposed to be saving a nunnery."

“Sounds like an easy enough trip.” Zira extracted an _albus_ from his coin-purse. “Heads or tails?”

“Do you even need to ask?"

He snorted. The angel always picked heads. He flipped, and...heads. Of course. Damn. “I hate nuns,” Zira said, showing Crowley the result. 

The angel grinned. “Sorry, Trouble.”

The demon sagged dramatically. “I suppose I’ll just...finish up with Johannes here, and be on my way...a shame, really. I felt we were so close to really cracking this printing press business. But without me, he’ll need a _miracle_ to finish it, I imagine…” Crowley did not miss the pleading slide of eyes in his general direction.

“Oh, fine. I’ll take this one.” He rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers. “The ink was off by a fraction. All better now.”

Zira was practically glowing. “Oh, thank you, Crowley. This really will change things for the better."

“Aren’t you supposed to be changing things for the worse?” Crowley asked, meaning it playfully, but the sudden stricken expression on the demon’s face said the joke wasn’t taken lightly.

“If—if more people are educated and capable of reading themselves, they’ll—they’ll be able to read blasphemous texts! Stray further from God. Or read the Bible themselves and make terrible faulty assumptions and base entire belief systems off of that. It could start a global rebellion,” the demon insisted in a rush, clearly just making up the rationalization on the fly.

Crowley snorted. “Of course.”

Zira changed the subject quickly. “Well, before I’m off—fancy lunch? I know a lovely little place that has the best _kartoffelkloesse_ this side of the Rhine. My treat.”

Crowley smiled, and Zira tried not to feel warmed by it. 

“Lead the way,” said the angel.

* * *

**HARLEM** — **1776**

“Alexander, is this a bad time to tell you that I’m really not great at uh—at fighting? In general? Warfare, things like that, not really my style.”

Alexander Hamilton had an absolute mad light dancing in his eyes. “Most of us are green boys, Crowley. We have nothing but the Grace of God and the fire in our bellies.”

“Look, that—that Grace of God thing might not be as much of a trump card as you think—”

“We can do this! Just trust me!”

Crowley groaned in absolute misery, but followed Alexander down another bloodsoaked Harlem alley, subtly miracling a dying Contintental soldier’s gunshot wound away when he was sure Alexander wasn’t paying attention. The soldier cried out in relief just as the pair rounded a corner.

“Sneaking behind enemy lines. In the middle of a skirmish. What could possibly go wrong?” Crowley muttered under his breath as they stepped onto a side street littered with bodies. “Where are the others?”

“Hercules and Laurens are skirting the other side, near the shore—they’ll meet us there.” Alexander replied quickly, moving soft-footed and fast, like he was born for this, eyes dancing with glee. This kid had been waiting his whole life for a war, hadn’t he?

“And your grand plan for us not to get shot in the meantime?” 

“I thought that was obvious. Don’t get shot.”

Crowley winced. Was this a punishment for over-miracling? Or did Gabriel just love watching him squirm, sending him into the middle of a revolutionary war? He’d been hoping to avoid the New World until things really settled down, but apparently it was not to be. 

Heading down the street, the brick-paved ground underneath them shook violently, the result of a cannon blast. Crowley and Alexander stumbled sideways, nearly falling into a heap on the ground. “Not good. Very not good.”

It was at that moment that Crowley spotted a British soldier across the way, pinned down under the cannon fire by a makeshift barricade. How had he managed to make it all this way without getting annihilated by the artillery barrage? Crowley narrowed his eyes, and the British soldier turned his head, white-gold curls bouncing as he did.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What? What is it?” Alexander asked, breathless from their nonstop sprinting. 

“Back in a second.” He made to move, but Alexander caught his sleeve. 

“Leave him! He’s just some idiot redcoat who ended up in the wrong place. Someone will take care of him in due course,” insisted the young revolutionary. 

“Yes, yes, but he’s my idiot,” Crowley explained. “Just—go on ahead, alright? I’ll meet you there.”

“You can’t go alone!”

Crowley let his eyes flash a brighter, more inhuman gold than usual. “Go on ahead.”

He didn’t think he’d successfully compelled Alexander—if anyone was bullheaded enough to resist, it was him—but he did scare the shit out of him enough to get him moving. 

With a sigh, Crowley quickly made his way to Zira. “Just how the Hell did you end up here?” 

Zira whipped off his hat, face a mess of soot and sweat. “Obviously haven’t been being demonic enough for Lord Beelzebub. They know I _detest_ war. Filthy, violent...men become little more than animals.”

“Rich coming from someone who’s literally part animal,” Crowley pointed out. “Are you hurt?”

Zira reluctantly pulled back a hand, showing a gushing wound in his side. No organs hit, definitely, but a gruesome injury all the same. “Got hit. Miracled myself out. Trying to summon up the energy to fix it, but…” the demon sagged. “Oh, Crowley, it’s been a horrible day.”

“Mine too.”

“What are you doing here?”

“They just told me to watch out for some upstart in the Sons of Liberty by the name of Hamilton. He’s got a spark in him. Bloody smart too. You?”

“I’m supposed to inspire a mutiny,” he said breathlessly as Crowley passed a hand over the entry wound. He sighed in relief when it began to heal. 

“Morale is low on this side of things. They’ll probably mutiny or desert at some point, anyway. Just claim credit when they do. You don’t belong in a place like this,” Crowley said, low and soft. When Zira’s skin was knitted back together, he left his hand resting just under the demon’s ribcage. He became intimately aware of how close they were. 

“And you do?” asked Zira, eyes meeting his. 

“No. But if Hamilton dies, Gabriel will be pissed, and I don’t wanna deal with that.” Crowley hauled Zira to his feet. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Don’t you have to go watch over your charge?”

“Let me watch over you first.”

Zira shook him off once he was back on his feet, adjusting the lapels of his uniform. “I’m a demon. I don’t need an angel watching over me. I’ll be fine, Crowley...find me when this is all over.”

“We don’t have any meeting places this side of the Atlantic,” Crowley reminded him, feeling slightly spurned, but not surprised. 

“Fraunces Tavern,” Zira said after a moment of contemplation. “You know it?”

“‘Course I know it. I hope you’ve got a different outfit in mind.”

The demon threw him a withering look. “Good luck with your revolution, dear.”

He departed, leaving the angel standing alone in the middle of the bloodsoaked street, cannon fire ringing in the distance. 

* * *

**LONDON** — **1800**

“Well. I should have expected this.”

Zira looked up when the newly installed bell over the bookshop door rang. Crowley walked in, resplendent in crimson trousers and a matching overcoat, with lacy white shirtsleeves underneath. He removed his stovetop hat, revealing that he’d cut his hair for the first time in possibly forever, favoring vague curls and sideburns. And a new addition—tinted glasses, to better hide the inhuman gold of the angel's eyes. Why Crowley didn't just miracle them to appear different to humans, Zira had no idea, but he'd long stopped questioning Crowley's quirks. 

Zira leaned on the counter, unable to stop himself from grinning broadly at the angel. “My first customer.” Not that he had any intention of ever selling any of this—really, he just needed a place to keep his ever-growing collection of books. And who knew what interesting humans might wander inside, ripe for corruption. Scholars were always the repressed sort. This was like baiting a trap. 

“Hell’s actually letting you settle down?” Crowley asked, immediately setting about to roaming aimlessly through the shop. “Good God. Have you slept with every great author of the past century?” He picked up a first edition Fielding, signed, shaking his head in dim wonder.

“I made friends with the right people,” Zira said, leaning his chin on his hand and watching Crowley’s lithe figure explore the fruits of his collecting over the past...well, since writing had been invented, essentially, though anything older than eight hundreds years was kept in a special room underneath the shop, built to maintain the exact temperature and environment necessary for the benefit of the old tomes. 

The stone tablets though—one nice thing about the Code of Hammurabi, the oils from your hands wouldn’t stain it. Bit of a bore to read through, but the history was undeniable. 

“You always do. Everyone needs a demon on their shoulder.”

Smirking, Zira rose from where he sat, rounding a corner to cut Crowley off, inserting himself into his friend’s personal space. “Even an angel?”

Crowley blushed furiously, as he always did. “From time to time,” he said noncommittally. 

Zira chuckled and let it pass, backing away. “Come. I’ve got an excellent bottle of Madeira just dying to be drank, and I need someone to celebrate with.”

“All these literary giants in and out of your bed, and you want a drink with me? I’m honored.” The angel’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Zira, but he smiled anyway. 

“Men of brilliant gifts they may be, but in the end, they’re human, and…”

“Certain things you just can’t connect on.”

“Precisely. You and I are in it for the long haul, such as it is.” The backroom was a bit of a cluttered mess that he did have vague plans of cleaning—just not today. All the books that were meant to be on shelves were on the shelves, so he was satisfied with his progress thus far. He’d earned himself a reward, and a glass with his favorite angel seemed just right. 

Zira hadn’t seen Crowley in a few years, and the ache of his absence had been undeniable. He really had let his affections grow altogether too strong. But even after doing this song and dance for so long, he still found himself unable to ignore that current of fear that ran underneath every moment he spent with Crowley. 

Crowley seemed unconcerned by what Heaven might do. A strongly worded letter. A recall. A demotion. But Crowley hadn’t been to Heaven in a very long time, and seemed to have forgotten how they punished traitors, questioners, rebels. 

They burned them. 

Hell wouldn’t be kind to Zira, no—but he did have his ‘tempting’ cover that might spare him his life, if nothing else. But Hell would be far kinder than Heaven, and Zira ached at the thought of Crowley Falling. To burn as he had burned. He wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, much less his best friend...even if they were the same person. 

“Zira?”

He realized he’d been standing with his fingers curved around the stems of two wineglasses, unmoving. He cleared his throat. “So sorry, dear. Got lost for a moment there.” He poured the wine and passed a glass along to Crowley, who accepted it gratefully, plopping down on the newly purchased chaise, lanky limbs fitting perfectly to the curve of it. 

“To new beginnings,” Crowley said with a small smile. They tapped their glasses together, a slight pure _ting_ radiating out. 

"New beginnings," Zira parroted back, pleased. 

They both sipped at their wine for a short period of comfortable silence, eventually broken by Crowley: "So how _did_ you convince Downstairs to go along with this?"

"May have, ah...claimed credit for a few more human affairs. Embellished reports, as one does."

"And how much did you _embellish_?" Crowley asked, a knowing glint in his eye. 

"I...told them that I was single handedly responsible for both the Reign of Terror and the Polish Revolution." 

"Oh, what, didn't want to aim too high and claim the American Revolution as well?"

Zira glared at Crowley. "Don't make fun. I've done plenty of evil deeds of late, just not the kind Hell would appreciate. They want everything done so _quickly_ , fleeting, instant gratification. No appreciation for the long game, the slow seduction…”

Crowley was side profile to him, idly examining his books, trying and failing to turn in a way that hid his blush. Zira suppressed a laugh; the mere mention of seduction had the angel melting. Lovely.

“Ever get bored of it?” asked Crowley, more to his wine than to Zira. 

“Mm, bored of what?”

“The...seducing humans off the path of righteousness.”

“Do you ever tire of guiding them back?”

They both had to sit and consider a great deal in the wake of the exchanged questions. It was Crowley who broke their temporary quiet first.

“I like to do it in my own way. And I don’t tire of it, just. Wish it was easier, sometimes. People can really only save themselves. You can try to help, but in the end, it’s all down to the humans. The choices they make.”

Zira watched Crowley out of the corner of his eye. He dimly decided while he didn’t mind his new haircut, he missed the angel’s long hair, wistfully recalling the few (all drunken) times Crowley had allowed him to braid it. 

“Do you really believe they can change for the better?”

“It’s not about changing,” Crowley said with a faint shake of his head. “Never was. S’ about choices. We are who we are. We can become more of who we really are, but I don’t know that anyone ever really _changes_ —but you can wake up every day and decide to do something differently than the day before. That’s all you can do.”

“This is veering far too close to moral philosophy,” Zira observed with distaste, busying himself with his wine. 

“You never answered my question,” Crowley pointed out, and Zira had wished the angel had allowed the conversation to move on, but apparently he wasn’t so lucky.

“Just business, my dear. It grows tiresome, but it is, quite literally, a necessary evil,” he replied with a grimace. “Better this than minding the racks in Hell.” A slight shudder passed through him, and he added, lowly, “Doing _anything_ Up Here is better than doing _anything_ Down There.”

Something in Crowley’s eyes made Zira think that he felt similarly on his end—better Earth than Heaven. Such cosmic irony.

The angel opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by the ringing of the bell over the bookshop door. 

“Surely not a customer? I’ve not even properly opened yet,” Zira said with a vague sense of annoyance, rising from his seat to glance into the main part of the shop.

His unneeded heart nearly stuttered to a full-stop in his chest; Beelzebub had just walked into his newly acquired hide out. 

“Cupboard!” Zira hissed frantically, grabbing Crowley up by his lapels and shoving him in the general direction of a cupboard that had been filled with misprinted Bibles one second ago, but with a quickly worked miracle, they were relocated to some far corner of the shop, leaving space for Crowley’s narrow frame within. 

“Zira, what—?”

“Management!” 

Crowley yelped when Zira shoved him in the cupboard and promptly slammed the door. He had only time to vanish their drinks away before Beelzebub entered his back room, eyes flicking over everything with unveiled distaste.

“ _Zzz_ zira,” they acknowledged, fly on their head buzzing. “Looks like you’ve settled in.”

“Oh yes, it’s gone quite smoothly, so kind of you to drop by—”

“Too bad you’ll have to pack it up again.”

Zira’s stomach plummeted to his feet and pooled there. He also could have sworn he heard a sharp intake of breath from inside the cupboard. “So sorry, come again?”

“Well, to be honest, when I told you that you could stay here it was mainly becau _zzzz_ e I hadn’t been listening when you were talking anyway,” Beelzebub admitted. “But the Dark Council has decided that after how well you’ve been performing up here you've earned a break from humans. They want to recall you.”

Terror flooded him. No. _No._ He couldn’t go back— _wouldn’t_. 

_But how can you refuse? There’s no lower place to Fall. Rebellion will earn you nothing but death._

“And—and how long would this be for, exactly?”

“Somewhere between a month and a hundred years. Who cares? Let’s go. Do you want me to burn all this for you?” Beelzebub cast their gaze around the bookshop, as if weighing the flammability of its contents and wondering where to toss the first match.

“Oh, I really...well, you know me, an old workaholic, I am! I’d be much too restless, ah, back home. Better off on Earth, really.”

“Not up for debate. Enjoy your vacation. Have everything sorted by the end of the day.”

Beelzebub departed without another word. 

Crowley burst from the cupboard almost immediately.

The angel and demon stared at one another.

“We have to do something,” Crowley said, panic evident in his voice. “Who knows who they’ll send up to replace you!”

“Someone who is actually effective rather than pretending to be, I imagine,” Zira responded in a thin, frightened voice. 

“Come on, we have 'til the end of the day to figure this out—”

He could already feel himself shutting down. “There’s nothing to figure out, Crowley.”

“Nothing to—wh—what!?” Crowley spluttered. “You can’t just take this lying down!”

“You never will understand, will you?” Zira asked coldly. “I’m not in a position to refuse. Not like you. You’ve never seemed to care either way if you Fall, with the way you talk, the way you conduct yourself, the—the bloody _Arrangement_.” Zira swallowed with difficulty. “You have somewhere to Fall, Crowley, but there is nothing more to be taken from me but my own life. And I will take Hell over death.” 

“Nothing more to be taken?” Crowley seemed practically aghast. He gestured wildly around. “LOOK at all this stuff! You’ve collected it for thousands of years, and they want you to just leave it? You have plenty still to be taken, you have the whole planet! You...you have _me_." Crowley shook his head, as if trying to jostle something back into place. "You love it up here! You love humans! This is where you belong!”

“I’m a demon,” he said, energy leaving him in a bitter rush. “I belong in Hell.”

Crowley deflated, losing inches in height as his shoulders slumped. “I...I don’t know how I can... _do this_...if you’re not here.”

Zira had to turn away, not wanting his eyes to betray him, because he was confident he felt a dampness there. Everything was going so wrong, so quickly, such a whiplash from the elation he’d felt just moments before. And there was no way to make Crowley understand just how trapped he truly was; and he couldn’t have the angel risking himself in some grand gesture. It would only make things worse.

“I think you should leave. I’ve much to do and very little time to do it,” Zira told Crowley quietly, trying (and likely failing) to keep the emotion out of his words. 

“Zira…”

“Please, Crowley. Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

The please was what did it. Fading footsteps, a jingle of the bell, and Zira was alone again.

* * *

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_ ”

Crowley swung his decorative cane angrily at low-hanging tree branches as he passed through St. James Park. He needed some target for the swell of anger and helplessness rising inside of him, and he saw no other fit outlet. He’d walked for hours after Zira had kicked him out of the bookshop, restless and full of desperate, directionless energy.

Racking his brain, endlessly— _there has to be a way to get him out of this!_

He had to do something that made Hell positive that not only did they need to have a permanent agent on Earth, but that said agent _had_ to be Zira.

There were two layers to Crowley’s thinking in that moment. On the surface, that Zira’s willingness to a) work with him and b) his general lack of desire to do anything truly monstrous meant that him being on Earth in place of any other demon was a net positive force in the universe. 

The lower layer was where most of the panic was coming from, the concept of a long, long, long time up here without Zira—alone. 

Maybe if this had happened a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, he could have faced down eternity without the demon treading the same road, but now? His greatest comfort in life was that no matter what happened, Zira was never too far out of reach. He was always there, perpetually, Wiling somewhere, happy to have a drink and a chat whenever Crowley needed it. And Crowley would be there too—to understand him in a way the other demons couldn’t. 

Well, that was the crux of it, wasn’t it?

They understood each other. 

To be known was terrifying, but the idea of _not_ being known held a pain to it that Crowley couldn’t face. 

He stopped by the duck pond, a frequent meeting place for he and Zira. Stared at the ducks drifting in the clear pool, quacking at one another and occasionally dipping down to snap at a fish. Lovers, parents with their children, single walkers on afternoon strolls, they all drifted around him. Humans living their lives, so unaware of what was going on underneath the surface of everything. Blissfully and eternally ignorant. 

A thought struck Crowley. A plan, rather. Not a good one. But still a plan.

“What if,” he whispered to himself, “I just...go absolutely apeshit?”

* * *

The bell above the door jingled once more. He heard flies buzzing. 

Zira sighed. Evidently he wasn’t even getting until the end of the day to pack. “Just need a bit more time, my Lord, and everything will be sorted…”

Beelzebub surprised him by grabbing his sleeve and tugging him towards the door. “We’ve got a problem.”

Soon enough, they stood in St. James Park, and indeed, there was a Problem.

Crowley, namely. 

Hundreds had gathered around him, and Zira could taste in the air the sheer number of miracles being worked, every molecule alive with celestial energy. He watched, dumb-struck, as Crowley miracled breadbaskets into his arms, like he had so long ago on the Ark. He passed out food like it was nothing, stopped a few times to pass a hand over a crippled leg or eyes losing their sight. He vanished a cleft lip in a child; straightened the hunch out of an old woman’s back. 

More and more people came, encroaching on Crowley, beseeching him for this, that, or the other thing, and every single one he granted their wish with a tilt of his head and a faint smile. 

“What in Hell’s name is he _doing_?” Zira asked, mouth agape.

“ _Everything_ ,” buzzed Beelzebub, disgust and horror mingling in their words. 

Through the crowd, in one perfect moment of clarity, Zira’s eyes met Crowley’s.

And Crowley winked.

Oh.

_Oh!_

Zira chuckled to himself. He couldn’t help it. Now that he knew how the stage was set, all he could do was play his part and hope for the best—and why not have a bit of fun with his so-called nemesis?

Zira stalked forward, dipping deep into his reserves of power. “Gader’el!” he called, using the angel’s real name for the first time in well over a millenia. Crowley wore an expression of false dismay.

“No! My sworn enemy! Flee, innocent humans, for the monster has come!”

_Laying it on a bit thick, my dear._ Zira dropped the miracle that made his eyes appear human, and added a bit of ominous glowing for the added effect. Patches of scales rose up over his face, his hands. The humans all turned their heads to him, appropriately horrified at the sight of him.

He snapped his fingers, wiping any memory of the past few hours in their minds.

(But, notably, not undoing anything Crowley had done—not that Beelzebub needed to know that.)

Their eyes glazed over, and with another snap, they were gone, back in their homes. A drain on him, to be sure, but necessary.

“Did you kill them?” Beelzebub called curiously.

“Uh...yes,” Zira lied, deciding to take his chances that Beelzebub wouldn’t check. “All souls secured for the master, my Lord.”

The fly-demon made an impressed face. 

Crowley fell dramatically to his knees, holding up his hands. “No! All the good works I’ve done...erm, now _un_ done...how dare you, you—you _Hellspawn_ ,” Crowley said, and Zira could tell he was forcing himself not to smile. When Zira reached him, he murmured from the corner of his mouth, “Hit me!”

“What?” Zira hissed. “I’m not going to hit you, you idiot.”

Crowley decided to take matters into his own hands and tackled Zira down into the mud. Really? It would take ages to get the stains out of his suit. “Whatever you’re going to do, make it look good!” whispered Crowley urgently, putting his hands lightly around Zira’s throat and making a show of trying to strangle him. 

Crowley snapped out his wings, pearlescent and perfectly groomed, a rare thing for an angel. Zira mimicked him, all the better to hide the fact that their “fight” probably wouldn’t so much as leave a bruise on either of them. Shielded by black and white feathers, they rolled around in the mud on the banks of the duck pond, trading exaggerated insults and light punches purposefully aimed in areas that wouldn’t hurt beyond a passing sting. 

Zira finally ended the faux-skirmish by lifting Crowley bodily and throwing him into the pond with a tremendous splash. The ducks scattered, quacking loudly in dismay. 

Crowley’s head broke through the surface, his hair plastered to his forehead, blinking water out of his eyes, glasses lost somewhere in the muck. The expression on his face told Zira that he would have preferred a good right hook. 

“I told you— _ssss_ tay out of my city,” Zira hissed. 

“Foiled again!” cried Crowley. “You fiend, you scoundrel!”

“Perhaps it’s time I end you permanently!” It was Zira’s turn to wink. He made to lunge at Crowley, but the angel disappeared in a puff of white feathers, leaving only his sodden top hat drifting along in the water. 

Zira allowed himself a small smile before schooling his face and turning to Beelzebub, who was heading in his direction after watching the spectacle he and Crowley had made from afar. “That should keep him at bay for awhile...though I perish to think what he might do once he realizes I’m taking a sabbatical…”

“Awfully flashy for an angel,” Beelzebub observed, and Zira could see those cob-webbed gears churning in the other demon’s head. “He do that a lot?”

“Oh, he tries. But I always put a stop to it. He’s frightened of me, you see.”

Crowley probably _was_ frightened of him, in a way, but for entirely non-violent reasons. 

Beelzebub narrowed their eyes at Zira. “Changed my mind. Again. No sabbatical. It’ll be bad for the bottom-line, him running around unchecked like that.”

Zira pretended to pout. “Oh, I was so looking forward to a vacation…”

“Too bad.” Beelzebub was already turning to leave. “And don’t let him get away, next time. Shouldn’t take you 6,000 years to kill one angel.”

“He’s very slippery, that one!” Zira called after them. “Next time I’ll get him though, I’m sure of it!”

* * *

Just as the dusty grandfather clock tolled midnight, Crowley met Zira at the bookshop. Zira had miracled all of the books out of their boxes and back to their proper places—the proper places being literally scattered every which way with no rhyme or reason behind their placement. Zira knew where everything was, of course, but the key would be that no one else on Earth would. He was sure that in no time at all, he’d be sweeping up the bones of mortals who would try and fail to find specific volumes in the disorganized piles. 

Crowley wore a fresh suit, armed with flowers and chocolates, grinning like a madman. The flowers were a mixture of _datura stramonium_ , colloquially referred to as Devil’s Snare, and _datura innoxia_ , Angel’s Trumpets. The two species were housed in a single fine glass vase. Crowley set them on the counter, alongside the box of German chocolates, a favorite of Zira’s. 

“I take it you’re staying?”

Zira returned the grin, before promptly grabbing Crowley by the ears and pulling him into a kiss over the counter.

It was fleeting—a mere press of lips to lips, probably the most chaste physical contact Zira had ever had. And then he pulled back, patting Crowley’s cheek. “A brilliant move, dear boy. I can’t thank you enough.”

Crowley’s jaw hung slack, gold eyes comically wide. Zira lightly pressed two fingertips to the bottom of his chin and closed his mouth with a little click. He smiled knowingly, delighting in the effect he had on the angel. Still, he hadn’t done it just to see Crowley’s reaction. He was practically overwhelmed with affection for his friend, brimming with it. Even after so rudely kicking Crowley to the veritable curb, the angel had still risked himself tremendously to save Zira. 

There was a determination forming, he noted, from both of them. A determination not to be separated.

“You should stay in London for a time,” Zira told him. “After all, someone has to foil my wicked plans.” 

Crowley returned the smile, a bright blush flaring along his defined cheekbones. “S’pose I could hang around for a bit.”

* * *

“What were you _thinking?_ ”

Crowley stood in the room of the inn he’d been staying at. Gabriel blocked the door, arms crossed, violet eyes grave. He’d appeared with a flap of wings just as a reasonably drunk Crowley was about to fall into bed. 

He should’ve known he wouldn’t be able to get away with such a display, not without a reprimand from Gabriel. But at least he’d been lucky enough to be visited by the Archangel when he was here, rather than when he was still with Zira—and he’d been with the demon well into the wee hours of the morning. The sun was threatening to rise over London.

He couldn’t miracle himself sober without Gabriel noticing, so he would have to do a bit of acting. And as Zira had so deftly pointed out a few hours earlier, his acting left a lot to be desired.

“Wanted to...uh, assert Heaven’s dominance. Heard through the grape-vine that the demon Zira is planning on staying in London for a time. Wanted to scare him off.”

“And did that work?” Gabriel asked, surely already knowing the answer.

“Not...exactly.”

Gabriel sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You really just have no self control, do you, Gader’el?” 

Heaven had pointedly refused to ever call him by the name he’d chosen for himself. Not that he was surprised. 

“A little restraint goes a long way,” Gabriel continued, “and you know how it is now—the humans have to have faith. If you just miracle willy-nilly, that’s not faith, that’s fact.”

“And what’s so wrong with that?” he asked before he could stop himself. _Really didn’t need that second bottle of wine, did I?_

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at Crowley. “You always ask dangerous questions. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve been down here too long.”

Crowley’s heart clenched. “I—I’m sorry. You’re right. Of course you’re right. I should’ve been more careful. It was stupid. Dead stupid. Won’t happen again, I swear.”

Gabriel watched him for a few moments, and Crowley stood there in terror of what he might say. He was tempted to beg, _no, don’t send me home, please, please, let me stay here._ But he knew that would be a dead giveaway that the Archangel was right.

He had been down here too long.

“You’ll be on miracle rations for awhile. A decade, maybe more. We can’t let something like this go unpunished. You’re on thin ice, Gader’el,” Gabriel told him evenly. “Tread carefully.”

Gabriel vanished then, leaving him alone. Crowley practically gasped in relief. He sank down on his bed, and let his head fall into his hands, feeling very much like he’d just dodged a bullet.

He had to be more careful. _Had_ to be. If he didn’t toe the line just so, he’d lose everything.

He touched his lips without really thinking about it. He could lose Zira.

And he couldn’t abide that.

* * *

**ST. JAMES PARK — 1862**

It was a nice day. Autumn. Leaves turning orange all around them, falling in the light breeze, swirling in semi-circles on their way to the ground, where they crunched beneath Crowley and Zira’s feet as they beat their usual route through St. James Park. 

The past few decades had been kind to them. No interfering assignments, staying largely out of one another’s way—except when they wanted to be in each other’s way, which was frequently. They’d been meeting more and more often, rarely going more than a few weeks without seeing each other. 

London had become their city, and they’d taken great joy in learning it inside and out. Taken great joy in each other’s steady company. It should’ve been a time absent any anxieties for Crowley. After all, this was the happiest he’d ever been.

He felt more like he was in the eye of a storm, and nothing good was waiting on the other side. His last crossing of paths with Gabriel had set his teeth permanently on edge. One toe out of line, one poorly timed check-in, and it could all come crashing down. 

He wanted— _needed_ —insurance. 

He’d been dithering over how to ask Zira for ages, and had come up with no tactful ideas. So the best plan he had was to tell him the truth and hope for the best.

They stopped at the duck pond, as they usually did. Zira fed the ducks with a suggestion of a smile, humming along to himself. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Crowley began quietly. 

“You rarely stop,” replied the demon, untroubled.

“We’ve a lot in common, you and me.”

Zira’s eyes slid to him. “In some ways, yes. But I’d argue there’s some fundamental differences. I was an angel once, but...I'm Fallen.”

“How much does that really matter?”

“The Almighty certainly seemed to think it mattered,” Zira said distantly.

This wasn’t off to a great start. Crowley swallowed, looking away. “What I’m saying is...what if it all goes pear-shaped?”

Zira frowned. “I like pears.”

The demon was trying to derail the conversation, that much was obvious. Zira didn’t like to think about their positions. Didn’t like to think about the risk they were taking, now that they were far too deep into it for either of them to get out unscathed. It hadn’t been one dalliance to the dark side (or in Zira’s case, the light side), it had been methodically fooling their superiors for hundreds of years. It had been a silent pledge of loyalty, loyalty that, at least for Crowley, ran deeper than his allegiance to his own side.

“I need a favor,” Crowley pressed onward, steeling himself. “I’ve written it down—the walls have ears. Well, not walls. Trees have ears. Ducks have ears. Do ducks have ears? Must do, that’s how they hear other ducks.” He passed the folded note to Zira. 

Zira took it, glancing suspiciously at Crowley. He unfolded the note. It took him half a second to read what it said: _Hellfire_

He hissed, crumpling up the note in his hand. “Out of the question!”

“Why?” Crowley asked, turning to face Zira. “It’s insurance.”

“It would destroy you!” In his anger, Zira had forgotten to keep up the miracle to hide his eyes, and they were fully ice blue, pupils thin slits slashing through his sclera. “I won’t give you a suicide pill!”

“I need something to defend myself with, if it comes down to it. Something to buy me time to get away. I’m not planning on just— _offing myself_ ,” he argued. “You were the one who was so worried about doing this in the first place. Well, maybe now I’m worried too. If they come for me—if they find out—”

“Stop. _Stop_.” Zira shook his head, pinching his eyes shut. “They’ve left us well enough alone for over fifty years. What brought this on?”

“Exactly that. What if—what if they _know?_ What if they’ve been so hands off because they’ve been gathering information? Up or Down.”

“You think it would take them fifty years to get enough evidence to kill us both? It wouldn’t take them fifty minutes, with how careless we’ve been,” Zira spat back, temper quickly rising. 

“We haven’t been careless—”

“We’ve taken this too far,” the demon cut across him. “Talking about this—” He tossed the crumpled note into the pond, and set it on fire for good measure. “It just goes to show that. The...the fraternizing, it’s—”

“Fraternizing?” Crowley demanded, wounded. Was that all it was? Fraternizing was stilted small talk at a work function. What they’d been doing for so long now...it had to mean more than that. 

It did to Crowley.

“Whatever you wish to call it.” Zira made to stalk away. “This conversation is over. And perhaps it’s best we stay clear of each other for a time, if you’re this concerned about being caught.” 

“Zira!” Crowley called after him. No, this was going all wrong. He didn’t want distance, he just wanted a Plan B, was that so much to ask?

Zira kept walking.

_“Aziraphale!”_

The demon was back in a flash, his hand fisted in Crowley’s collar, dragging him down so they were eye to eye. _“Never,”_ he hissed, fangs visible, tongue noticeably forking. " _Never_ call me that again.”

He released Crowley, and then he was gone.

* * *

**RASTENBURG — 1944**

It had all been going so well. As well as anything that had failed spectacularly so many times could go, anyhow.

Tonight was the night Adolf Hitler would die. 

Zira would make sure of it.

Now he couldn’t kill the man directly—hands off as he was supposed to be, but he had gathered all of the appropriate people together, helped strengthen the German resistance, dabbled with the Solf Circle, dodged the Gestapo at every turn, made all the connections necessary for Operation: Valkyrie to come to life. 

He’d convinced Hell that this was a brilliant plot. Multiple military coups taking place over Europe, practically overnight? It would spin the world even further into chaos. And chaos was the point, yes?

The Dark Council had been uneasy, but they’d agreed that yes, more chaos was Good. Or Bad, rather. And Bad was Good. 

Admittedly...perhaps a large factor in the Council agreeing was Beelzebub pointing out that the potential disaster (read: potential failure) of the plan meant that no matter the outcome, it would be sufficiently Hellish enough to be worth attempting. But Zira was very intent on staying positive in spite of that. 

So there. Permitted by his masters, in league with thousands of humans of a similar mindset, detailed strategies in place to make sure that everything went off without a hitch. 

He hadn’t expected to be given the task of delivering the briefcase with the time-bomb, but he hadn’t refused Stauffenberg when he’d asked. As he was the only one involved in Operation: Valkyrie that was immortal, it seemed the only fair thing to do. Still, he’d prefer to avoid discorporation if at all possible.

The bomb was primed. Soon enough, delivered to its intended destination by Zira, who was in disguise as a high-ranking SS officer he had conveniently miracled his face to resemble. A few short minutes before the bomb was due to detonate, he received a planned phone call and was summoned out of the room.

All going well. 

Until the bomb went off. Earlier than he expected. Much earlier. Before he got out.

Screams—fire—smoke—gunshots. All in quick succession, and then the entire conference room was coming down on him. A board hit the back of his head, and he was sent spiraling to the ground, buried under debris, slipping in and out of consciousness. His entire corporeal form was racked with pain. He had no idea what had been crushed, broken, split, or cut, but his current assessment was _most of him_ and also: _ow._

He had to get out, and quickly, but he couldn’t move, pinned as he was. 

Until someone started digging him out. 

“Where the Hell are you, you great bloody _moron_ of a demon—”

“Crowley?” he gasped out, coughing a plume of concrete dust. He hadn’t heard that voice in eighty years. 

A hand wrapped around his ankle. “Thank God, there you are. I’m getting you out of here.” Zira felt the dim twinge of celestial interference, and he was pulled from the rubble easily, and scooped into Crowley’s waiting arms. The angel was disguised as well, donned in an _SD-Leiter_ uniform, a senior officer of the _Sicherheitsdienst_. 

“What are you doing here?” Zira managed, ears ringing so loudly he could barely hear his own words, and Crowley’s response was similarly muted. Had he blown out his own eardrums? Likely. 

“Getting you out of trouble.” 

Out of the smoke and fire, into the still standing part of the _Wolfsschanze_ complex. Soldiers and Gestapo raced around them, and Crowley called in fluent German, “We need medical personnel immediately! There’s been an attempt on the Fuhrer’s life!” 

They obeyed, nobody paying them any extra attention.

“Is he dead?” Zira rasped.

“No.”

Zira pinched his eyes shut tighter. “Damn it all.”

“Trust me, it’s better that way.”

“You can’t be serious—!?”

“I’ll explain when we’re safe, now shut up, would you?”

Out of the building they went, and Crowley easily lied his way past each of the security checkpoints, flashing evidently convincing papers until they reached a vehicle, some horrible white monstrosity. Zira hadn’t warmed to automobiles yet, and wasn’t sure he ever would. Loud, graceless things. He’d never gotten on well with horses, or any animal, for that matter, but at least they were _quiet_. 

Crowley packed him into the passenger seat gingerly, then took up on his side, slamming their doors shut with a snap of his fingers. He roared out of the carpark, dodging emergency vehicles racing in their direction. 

“There’s a girl,” Crowley cooed, patting the dashboard. 

“You own an automobile,” Zira managed, grasping his stomach. 

“Citroen 2CV. Reliable little thing.”

“French,” he observed, noting that his vision was fading in and out. 

“Spent the past few years there. Took a liking to it.”

Now that the initial shock was wearing off, he could feel blood seeping out of him in alarming amounts. And the broken bones. Oh yes. Lots of those. With a push of a miracle, they snapped back together with a gruesome and loud _crack._ He was slammed by a wave of nausea so intense it was all he could do not to vomit all over Crowley's absurd little French car. He didn't have it in him to do anything about whatever wounds were spewing blood. A problem for later.

“Almost there, Trouble. Come on," Crowley coaxed when he could see Zira flipping further and further down in his seat.

Trouble. He’d missed that nickname. He’d missed _Crowley_. An unbearable amount. It had been a long eight years. 

Blinking open one eye, he saw he was being escorted up a narrow wooden staircase, into an upstairs flat overtop a notary. They were on the outskirts of Rastenburg, near the airstrip. The airstrip where he was supposed to be going to catch a flight to Normandy, but he supposed that wouldn’t be happening now. 

Soon enough, Crowley had laid him down on a modest double bed in a small bedroom, sparsely furnished, save for a dresser, and a night stand with a single vase of white roses. Crowley lit an oil lamp, dispensing with the match before going to Zira. He began to strip him out of his pilfered uniform.

He whimpered in pain as Crowley undressed him, gasping each time the angel’s hands or the fabric of the uniform grazed one of his wounds. “Shh, I know, I know it hurts, I’m going to take care of you, I promise.”

_I’m going to take care of you. I promise._

Zira believed him without question.

Soon Zira was stripped down to his underclothes and nothing more. Crowley tore off his own jacket and hat, seeming glad to be rid of them. “Makes my skin crawl even wearing that stuff,” he said by way of explanation. “I’ve got to watch it with the miracles—we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.”

“Heaven isn't pleased with you?” Zira rasped.

“Yeah, well, what else is new?” Crowley disappeared from the room for a moment, before returning with a field surgeon kit. Zira’s hearing had come back just enough that he could make out an air raid siren outside. There were no planes coming for the city, but the Nazi forces were certainly taking the bombing as a sign of attack. 

Crowley began by extracting the larger shards of wood and metal that had pierced Zira in the explosion. The worst offender was a large wooden splinter that went through the meat of his thigh, missing his femoral artery by mere inches.

“This is going to hurt,” Crowley warned him. He gave him a balled-up sock to bite down on. When Crowley removed the splinter, Zira threw his head back, his scream muffled by the cloth, but only just. 

Crowley dropped it on the bloodstained roof of a tobacco tin on the nightstand, with all of the others. The angel removed the sock from Zira's mouth, tossing it to the side, Zira gasping all the while.

“Why did you come for me?” Zira asked breathlessly, desperate to distract himself. He noted with dread that Crowley had pulled out a canteen of antiseptic. 

“Why wouldn't I?”

“Because we haven't spoken in eighty years. And we didn't exactly end on good terms, either.”

“Would you rather me leave?” Crowley uncapped the canteen. 

“I didn't say that. It’s...so good to see you, dear boy.” Crowley splashed the antiseptic on Zira’s stomach, the bloodiest of his injuries, and he let out an exclamation of agony. “ _Fuck—!_ Perhaps not so good after all.”

“Your thigh is going to hurt worse. Actually, give me a mo, I should have thought of this earlier.” Crowley left the room for a moment, returning with a flask. “Whiskey. Not good whiskey, but it’ll take the edge off.” He passed the flask to Zira. 

Zira gratefully gulped from the flask. Crowley was right, it wasn’t good, but it was better than dealing with all of this sober. Crowley returned to his work, with less protest from Zira, now. Eventually the canteen was abandoned in favor of a suture kit to sew up the more grievous injuries. By that point Zira was solidly drunk enough to barely register the needling pain. 

“What have you been doing all this time?” Zira asked quietly after some time, watching Crowley methodically stitch up a deep cut in the meat of his hip. 

“You mean during the war, or since...since we last talked?”

“Both, I suppose.”

Crowley's face was inscrutable, gold eyes focused on the work of his hands. “Slept for a long time. Long long time. Then Gabriel woke me up and told me things were afoot, so, here I am. Been working mostly with the Maquis lately. The White Rose before that.”

“The White Rose,” Zira repeated, a memory flickering at the edge of his mind. His eyes slid briefly to the vase on the night stand. “Munich, yes? Students and teachers at the universities, with their anti-Reich leaflets?”

“Mmhmm.”

“All caught. All tried. All convicted.”

“Tried is putting it nicely. We both know the _Volksgerichtschof_ is a sham,” Crowley said, something deeply sorrowful undercutting his words. “Not all of them were executed, at least.”

Zira laughed mirthlessly. “It feels like the end of the world, doesn’t it? All of this? Like the humans have decided to make their own apocalypse.”

Crowley’s jaw tightened incrementally in response. “It’s Hell on Earth.”

“I’m inclined to agree. And in spite of my species, I don’t mean that as a compliment.” Crowley moved on from his hip to the final wound awaiting stitches, one cutting from his sternum down his right pectoral, with the beginning of the furrow slashing through the head of his snake tattoo. “How did you know where I would be? What I would be doing?”

“Been doing a little courier work lately. May’ve snuck a peek at some of the letters getting passed back and forth between your people and mine. Saw the name A. Z. Fell. Very subtle.”

“And you were worried something may happen to me?”

“I knew something would happen to you. There’s been dozens of plans to kill Hitler. They all fail. I knew this one would too. Didn’t want you to get caught in the cross-fire. It's better this way, like I said. Hitler's a total moron. He's the Allies' last best hope. Just look at what he's doing in Russia. Mad evil git isn't winning any chess games anytime soon."

Zira drank from the flask again, now almost empty, and tried not to notice how close Crowley was, or how he smelled, or how tired he looked. His hair was short, almost a military cut. Down to his white shirtsleeves and uniform pants, he looked even thinner than when Zira last saw him. Could angels lose weight due to stress? He didn’t think their corporeal forms worked like that, but he didn’t know. 

"You don't look well."

Crowley merely shrugged. "Never much liked war."

_No, you never did, did you? You never were a soldier, but that's always what they try to make you._

His heart, whatever there was of it, ached for the angel; it had been an immensely lonely eighty years, and he’d spent most of it regretting his last conversation with Crowley. He’d stifled the hole in his chest where the angel had resided with the assurance that at least if he stayed away from Crowley, it guaranteed his safety. And that mattered to him more than anything. 

Hellfire. Honestly. He would never let such a thing get anywhere near Crowley. He’d sooner choke.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he murmured to Crowley, just as the angel finished knitting up the final wound. 

Crowley looked up sharply, eyes widening in surprise.

“An angel,” Zira breathed, head-swimming with blood loss and alcohol. “What business does a demon have wanting an angel like I want you?”

Crowley’s brain appeared to have stopped operating. His mouth fell open, but he said nothing, and Zira was leaning closer, minding his injuries. 

“And it’s never been about corrupting. Or possessing—though, oh, dear boy, I’ve always wanted to have you. But I wanted to hold you, as well. To love you. Laughable, really, a demon _loving_ anything.”

“Zira, what are you—?”

He slid his hand around the back of Crowley’s neck and pulled him into a kiss. And this one was not chaste, not like the celebratory peck a century and a half ago. He forced into him everything he felt but could not say, felt but could not explain. Crowley melted underneath him, opening his mouth without hesitation and granting Zira room to lick in, tasting him, _finally_.

Zira leaned back against the headboard, resting there, and tugged Crowley into his lap. He followed with a muffled yelp before Zira fixed his mouth to the angel’s neck. How many times had he done this, with how many humans, and never had it felt like this, so electric, something striking forcefully to the center of his being. 

“I’m a demon,” he murmured into Crowley’s skin, noting how the angel trembled underneath his touch. “But this broken soul of mine, this battered, worthless thing, it’s yours, Crowley. It will always be yours. Even when I leave you.”

Crowley gasped, hands twining into Zira’s hair as the demon’s tongue traced the long column of his throat. “Then don’t leave,” he begged. “Not again. Stay.”

Zira kissed his chin. “Nothing is worth losing you...not even this…” Back to the angel’s mouth, smashing their lips together, hands framing his face.

A true demon would be giddy to have an angel in their lap, shaking with want, thoughtlessly grinding into them. If only he could be a true demon.

Zira pulled back, Crowley’s face still in his hands. He brushed his thumb along the angel’s bottom lip. “If you were any other being in Creation, I would fuck you until you saw every star I fell past when I plummeted to Earth.” He leaned his forehead against Crowley’s. “But I won’t let you Fall for me. You don’t deserve that.” 

“I’ve already fallen,” Crowley whispered back weakly. “Can’t you see that? It’s always been you."

Zira shuddered. He buried his face in Crowley’s neck, breathing in the scent of him, holding him as tightly as he dared with his injuries.

“They’re not watching us,” Crowley continued softly, running his hands up and down Zira's back, as if to memorize every detail with his fingertips. “They can’t be. We’d both already be dead if they were.”

Zira didn’t respond, stomach a pulsing knot of need, heart overflowing with that foreign love that seemed to contradict everything else he was made of.

“Please. Even if it’s only tonight—this one night—let me have this,” Crowley pleaded with him. “If you leave again... _when_ you leave again...at least I’ll have this.” He forced Zira’s face away from his neck, guiding their eyes to meet. “Just touch me. Just this once.”

Zira grazed a hand down his chest, unclasping buttons as he went. “Do you think She could forgive us one night?”

Crowley’s skin jumped under his touch. He nodded hurriedly, “It’s not—it’s not just lust. That’s not what this is.”

Pressing up suggestively into Crowley, Zira said, “Oh, my dear, there is a great deal of that.”

“But it’s not just that. You said—you said love— _ahhh, Zira_ —” his hand fleetingly brushed the front of Crowley’s tented pants. 

“I do love you terribly,” Zira admitted, his chest giving at the words, bursting to life after being held in for so long. “And if this is my last and only chance to show you...I’ll make it count.”

Shedding of clothes, kisses pressed everywhere, hands tracing every inch of one another, pushing and pulling, a desperate desire for friction, to touch everywhere, to bleed into one another. And when Crowley sank down on him, they both swore loudly, overwhelmed by the sensation. 

He moved slowly at first, Crowley gripping him like he’d die if he let go, whimpering into his collar bone, a continuous tremor running through him, gold-streaked thighs trembling. Every angel bore marks of Heaven, and Crowley was no different. Gold spiraled up the length of his lanky legs, in thin, ribbon-like strips. Almost snake-like. 

_Were you always meant to be mine? Were you mine, once? Did I lose everything but my love for you in the Fall?_

But those questions didn't matter now. Only this moment, only _this_ mattered. 

He whispered filthy things in the angel’s ear, beautiful things, _everything_. Once Crowley adjusted to the sensation, Zira sped up, hands on the angel’s narrow hips, slamming him down over and over again. It was something so beyond pleasure. It felt like healing. It felt like meaning. 

It felt like Heaven. Better, even. 

They had no business fitting together like this, no business being the connecting edges of frayed strings cleaved in twain before time began, healed miraculously in this moment, Crowley’s body bending into his, as if to say, _welcome home, you’ve been missed._

“Even if—only for a night—” Zira gasped into Crowley’s neck, punctuating his words with calculated thrusts of his hips, “you must know—oh, _Crowley_ , I will love you endlessly.” 

And he would, oh, he would. This creature, all his, the only thing he had ever loved, and like fire weeping from a cedar tree, that love would burn with him, live eternally. Burn until he burned, until the Earth burned, until Armageddon rained Hell and Heaven down on them all and the only thing left in the remnants were husks of cities, burnt reminders of the majesties of the human race, and all the kingdoms thereof. 

And even then, beyond that—even when he was nothing—his love would remain.

Crowley came, several times, but there were many benefits to being supernatural beings. 

If he had only one night, he would make it last. He pressed Crowley onto his back, slotting them together, and Crowley moaned underneath him, a high sound, a perfect sound, and he keened out his love for Zira over and over, in a way so sincere, so riddled with dead devotion that he had no answer but _yes, yes, tell me again, tell me again, and I’ll tell you, let me tell you while I still can, let me show you._

It was hours before Zira was willing to part from him, and even then, the prospect seemed equivalent to voluntary decapitation—how could he leave now? How, when he knew what wholeness felt like? How cruel was it, to taunt a man dying of thirst with a clear pool in the distance, only to have it vanish when he arrived, nothing more than a mirage? 

He felt another orgasm building in him, and he drove into Crowley, kissing him with a gentleness contrary to the way his body moved. He breathed against his lips, “Just...just this one time, call me by my name,” he begged.

Confused, hair plastered to his forehead, Crowley gasped out, "...Zira?"

"My real name." 

Understanding dawned on Crowley. 

The angel obliged him: _“Aziraphale.”_

Zira came with a shout, so carried away by the feeling of Crowley clenching around him that he lost himself for a few moments, vaguely wondering if he’d been discorporated. Apparently he hadn’t, because he came to wrapped around Crowley, slick with sweat and release, his head pressed under the angel’s jaw. 

They were silent for a time, both struggling to calm their pounding hearts, to return to a normal breathing pattern. 

Crowley broke the silence first: “You’ve ripped your stitches.”

Zira looked down at himself, at his weeping wounds, the blood stains on the sheets. He miracled his injuries away with a wave of his hand. 

Crowley stared at him. “Why didn’t you just do that in the first place!?”

“The shock of it all, I suppose.” He pressed a kiss to Crowley’s forehead, an emptiness already sinking into him. It was over. Their one night. Their one chance. And now he would have to leave—and leave to what? Back to the war, back to the misery, back to serving Hell. He didn’t know if this moment would haunt him, or comfort him. 

“Will you stay with me for awhile?” Crowley asked.

“It’s too dangerous, my dear.”

“Just for the morning. Just...hold me, would you? I want to sleep. Would be better if...if you stayed.” The angel had difficulty meeting his eyes.

Zira shifted so that he was spooning Crowley, one arm under the angel’s head, and another wrapped around his waist. “When should I wake you?”

“Never?” Crowley tried. Zira huffed into the back of his neck. “Whenever you want, Trouble.”

Never worked for him too, but that wasn’t an option. 

“Sleep well,” he said into Crowley’s ear. “I’ll be here when you wake.”

* * *

**LONDON** — **1967**

Crowley stood with his hands on his hips, examining his handiwork with pride. 

Records, organized first by year, then by genre, and finally alphabetically. Thousands of them, all with neatly scrawled price tags affixed to them. The shop was wide open and extraordinarily well-lit, as he’d gone out of his way to get a corner shop that allowed for more windows. Tour posters and signed albums decorated the walls, full but not cluttered, and where the space allowed for it, he had plants of all varieties, ficuses and ferns, flowers galore, a particularly handsome rubber tree in one corner. 

He was enormously pleased with himself. He’d bought the property two months ago, and had been working to get it up and running ever since. Tomorrow was opening day, and it didn’t really matter if he got any patronage or not—he was just happy to be surrounded by what he loved, in a city he could at least tolerate. And if some humans wandered in to find some music, he’d be happy to help them.

Since the end of WWII, he’d been receiving orders less and less. He didn’t know why—likely something was going on far too high above his pay-grade for him to know about—but his last order had been purely, “Monitor the opposition.”

Crowley had tried not to grin when Gabriel told him this, and as soon as the Archangel was gone, he’d given into it.

He bought the shop the next day. 

Oh yes. He’d keep a very keen eye on the opposition. 

He and Zira had seen each other only a handful of times in the past twenty years. Whether that was the chaos of WWII and the Cold War keeping them apart or a subconscious choice on both of their parts, he wasn’t sure, but there was no ill will between them. 

But they didn’t talk about That Night. Never mentioned it again. They continued on as if they had never spent eighty years apart, as if they had never confessed how they truly felt about each other, as if Zira hadn’t taken him long and hard while air raid sirens screamed outside, hadn't gasped out his love over and over into Crowley’s skin. 

It wasn’t exactly easy going back to business as usual. But it was necessary. Crowley knew that in this Zira would never budge— _nothing is worth losing you,_ he’d said. And Crowley felt the same. If keeping each other at arms’ length meant _keeping_ each other, then so be it. 

He would suffer this ache for eternity, if it kept them both breathing. Just to know that Zira loved him back...that was enough. Not everything he wanted, not even close.

But enough.

Crowley stored his pride, and his thoughts of Zira, in favor of working on the more crucial matter at hand; the three humans who would be coming to his newly established shop in approximately ten minutes.

There were people out in the world who, for some Godforsaken reason, chose to call themselves Satanists. Not the Anton Lavey self-worship types over in America, mind, but rather _‘theistic Satanists,’_ as they so happily branded themselves. 

They made Crowley’s skin crawl. It wasn’t just the things they did, but that they blamed it all on Hell. They’d come up with some stomach-churning idea that even a demon couldn’t dream up, some dark, mindless unpleasantness that only a fully functioning human brain could conceive, then they’d shout “The Devil Made Me Do It!” and get the sympathy of the court, when the entire point of the thing was that the Devil never really made _anyone_ do _anything_. 

He didn’t have to. That was the bit the humans seemed to have so much trouble understanding. Hell wasn’t some great reservoir of evil, anymore than Heaven was a font of goodness, rather they were just sides in a great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, true grace and heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind. It all came down to them, in the end. 

Nevertheless. When you needed a batch of people who thought summoning demons was a good idea, Satanists were your best bet. Hell employed some for what Zira had unceremoniously deemed “bitch work,” but for most of them, they never made contact with anything approaching a demon. 

This lot would, though. Because an angel could hardly summon a demon and make a deal, now could he?

They showed up to the shop promptly, two minutes early even, and he ushered them in. They were dressed for the occasion, dripping with occult pendants and clad in black from head-to-toe. They bowed to him upon entering—he may have given them the impression he was a demon testing their mettle, to see if they were fit for ‘lower purposes of their unholy master’ bla bla bla—and he tried not to visibly cringe.

“Yes, yes, alright then, I’ve got a book for you, you’ll need to read a bit of it, there’s a certain way of doing these things, and then uh—yeah, go somewhere and get on with it. Bring the Hellfire back to me when you’re done,” Crowley explained in a rush, equal parts desperate to get this over with and terrified as to how it might go horribly sideways. If it got back to Heaven that he’d encouraged humans to go along with a demon summoning...being recalled would be the least of his problems.

He just had to get the Hellfire. If he could defend himself...all he needed was something to buy him enough time to escape, somewhere. Anywhere.

Escape, possibly, with Zira. But that was a fantasy he couldn’t let himself entertain for too long, or he’d do something far more stupid than this.

Crowley carefully passed the leader of the group, a bloke who called himself Alastair Blackheart (ooh, very scary), a 1522 edition of _The Grand Grimoire_. He had ‘borrowed’ it from Zira’s shop last time he’d visited the demon, and shockingly, his minor theft had gone so far unnoticed by his friend, which confirmed Crowley’s theory that Zira didn’t keep track of his belongings half as well as he claimed to.

“Bookmarked all the important bits.” There weren’t a lot of bookmarks. “Think you can handle it?”

“Of course, Master, it will be our honor,” replied Alastair, tucking the book close to his chest, getting his greasy fingers all over it in a way that would make Zira surely want to skin him. “And should we complete this task…”

“Yes, yes, diabolical accolades for all, service in life and death to our Dark Lord Satan,” Crowley waved him off. “Now, if you could be getting on with it—”

The shop door banged open. The bell tinkled meekly. 

A silhouette stood in the doorway, illuminated by the dim buzzing street lights outside. 

“I’m afraid your demon-summoning escapade will have to be called off,” said Zira, only his eyes visible in the low-light, as Crowley had most of the lights in his shop off, for the sake of discretion. 

“Another demon!” squealed one of the Satanists, delighted. She was already scrambling to bow. Zira paid her no mind, heading towards them. He yanked _The Grand Grimoire_ out of Alastair’s hands. 

“You won’t be needing that,” Zira said primly, and Crowley sensed the low-level miracle the demon worked to cleanse any sign that the book had ever been touched by human hands. “You all can go, now.”

“But—that wasn’t the deal,” Alastair insisted, squaring up his shoulders.

Zira whirled on the three Satanists, and promptly snaked out on them, letting himself turn reptilian from the head up, hissing and spitting at them. They screamed as one, turned on their heels, and fled the shop as though their lives depended on it.

Zira’s face returned to normal once they were out of sight. “I _detest_ Satanists.”

“I know,” Crowley said, with a flash of irritation. "And what the bloody hell did you do that for? How did you even know what I was up to?" 

“Really, dear boy, did you think I wouldn’t notice that you’d pilfered one of my books? My collection may look like chaos to you, but I can sense when even a speck is out of place,” Zira informed him.

It was at that point that Crowley noticed the duffel bag over Zira’s shoulder. “What’s in there?”

Zira frowned, radiating displeasure. “I can’t have you risking yourself like this. If those idiots had actually managed to summon a demon, there’s no telling what would have happened. Hell could have caught wise to you, and Heaven surely wouldn’t be far behind.”

Zira unzipped the duffel bag, then extracted a lantern from within. A bright flame burned inside, and Crowley knew what it was instantly.

“You…?”

“You know how I feel about this,” Zira interrupted him. “But better to get it from me, than by some other means. The devil you know and all that. And you know me well.” Gingerly, he passed the lantern to Crowley. “ _Don’t_ go opening the door.” 

Crowley took it, inspecting the hot orange-white flame burning inside, independent of any wick or source of gas, floating as an orb within the glass lantern. "Should I say thank you?" he asked dimly. 

"Best not." Zira shook his head. "I need to be going. It wouldn’t do well for me to be seen here—too open,” the demon gestured at the stretch of windows. “But...the shop, it’s...very you, my dear.” He graced Crowley with a warm smile that dropped far too soon for his liking. “I’ll just—see myself out. Tread carefully, Crowley.”

Gabriel’s warning from centuries ago echoed in his head: _“You’re on thin ice, Gader’el. Tread carefully.”_

Crowley’s eyes darted to his Citroen, parked on the curb outside. “I could give you a lift home,” he offered.

Zira shook his head. “No, no. I can walk. It’s lovely out.” He noted Crowley’s expression, and added, “Oh, don’t look so disappointed. Perhaps one day, we could…” He trailed off, biting his own tongue, “I don’t know, go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.” Another smile, sadder that time.

“Come on, Trouble. Anywhere you want to go. I’ll take you.” 

Zira looked up at him, pain plain in his eyes. He leaned forward, touching his lips so briefly to Crowley’s that the angel had no time to respond before Zira was pulling away again. Haltingly, Zira said, “You go too fast for me, Crowley."

Crowley didn’t have the mental energy to peel back the layers of that statement, and before he could speak again, Zira was gone.

* * *

**LONDON — 2006**

Crowley had just finished closing up shop for the day. He’d had a number of dull years in the early 2000s, forcing him to also stock CDs, but vinyl seemed to be experiencing a recent resurgence, so he had his hands full with customers most days. God bless the hipsters. 

He was currently reorganizing his collection of 80s hardcore, a genre he didn’t exactly adore himself but seemed to earn the admiration of many patrons passing through, using the mindless activity as a way to keep his mind off his conversation with Gabriel earlier in the day.

Things were afoot—just what in the Hell did _that_ mean? 

Crowley’s Blackberry rang in his pocket. He extracted it. He didn’t recognize the number, but picked up anyway, curious how anyone he didn’t know had gotten ahold of his mobile. “‘Lo?” 

“Crowley. It’s me. I need to speak to you.”

Crowley gripped the Blackberry until his knuckles turned white. “Zira...is this about…?”

“Yes. Armageddon,” the demon filled in for him. 

* * *

**LOWER TADFIELD — 2017**

They sat down side by side on the bus that wasn’t bound for London, but would take them there anyway. Zira, without looking at him, took his hand in his own, lacing their fingers together. 

_Our own side,_ rang in his ears, that and a million other things, _I don’t want to kill you,_ _you’re my friend,_ and _let me watch over you first_ and _everyone needs a demon on their shoulder_ and _I’ll take care of you, I promise_ and _oh, Crowley, I will love you endlessly._

He squeezed Zira’s hand, but didn’t risk anything more. This moment felt like a piece of thin, fine glass, able to be shattered by too careless a touch.

“We did it,” Crowley said numbly.

“We did it,” agreed Zira, just as toneless. Shellshocked. They’d been there, together, at the end of the world. In front of Heaven, Hell, and Satan Himself. Under the eyes of God, undeniably, they had made their stand. They had chosen their sides.

They’d chosen each other.

“What happens now?” was Crowley’s next question, one he had no idea how to answer himself.

Zira looked at him, ice blue snake eyes brighter than anything else on the dingy bus. “The rest of our lives, I expect.”

They didn’t speak again until they were at Crowley’s flat above the record shop. Actually, they didn’t speak then, either—because they’d barely made it through the door when Zira’s mouth was on his, hands on his cheeks, pressing him back into the wall. 

They went to Crowley’s bed, and he knew That Night wouldn’t be That Night anymore, because there would be Many More Nights, assuming they survived this ‘playing with fire’ that Agnes had predicted. 

They would have this, tangled up in sheets, this hushed, sublime love, they would have that for as long as they wanted and needed now. 

The end of the world—but the beginning of theirs. 

When they lay in the aftermath, wrapped in each other’s arms, Crowley’s ear pressed to Zira’s chest, Zira had an epiphany.

“Choose your faces wisely,” the demon murmured, “Crowley...I rather think we’re meant to impersonate each other. When they come—Heaven will take me, and Hell will take you. Holy water won’t kill you, and Hellfire won’t burn me.”

Crowley lifted his head, squinting at Zira. “You really think so?” he asked, doubtful.

“Do you have any better ideas? Agnes does tend to be quite literal at times.”

Crowley huffed, lowering his head back to Zira’s chest. “S’pose it’s worth a shot. Bit odd to think about though, isn’t it? You an angel, me a demon?”

“Difficult to wrap one’s head around, isn’t it? But we ought to try. It might be the only thing that saves us.”

* * *

**LONDON — 2017**

“To the world.”

“To the world.”

They clinked their glasses together, and drank deeply. 

“Do you ever wonder,” Zira said as he was finishing his meal and Crowley was finishing his sixth glass of champagne, “what it would have been like if I’d been an angel, and you’d been a demon?” 

“That little body swap of ours has your mind going all sorts of places, doesn’t it?” Crowley asked, chin resting in his hand. 

“Oh, you can hardly blame me, can you?” Zira tilted his head thoughtfully. “I rather think, even if our positions were reversed...we would still end up right here.”

Crowley grinned at Zira. “Right here?”

“Us. Together.” Zira beamed at him. “Our own side.”

Crowley leaned forward, kissing Zira soundly. When he pulled back, he smiled and said, “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”


End file.
